


faster, higher, stronger

by Anonymous



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Butch Katya, F/F, Lesbian AU, american trixie, cis girl au, directly inspired by the blatant butchness of 80's gymnasts, olympic gymnast au, russian katya
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 06:41:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13735293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: 1988. Seoul Summer Olympics. Tensions are at an all time high between the USA and USSR; the cold war is in full swing, and the nations are once again Olympic competitors. Coach Béla Károlyi has defected from Romania to America, his new red-blooded proteges are ready to usher in a new era of gymnastics, and the Soviet team is under a close, watchful eye.Yekaterina Zamolodchikova is finally back after a knockout year in the Moscow games, older, wiser, and under more pressure than ever. Beatrice Mattel is all set to continue her winning streak, but how can she, when her coach favours her shinier, younger teammates.Neither of them will admit their favourite part of the sport is all of the girls in leotards.





	faster, higher, stronger

**Author's Note:**

> My knowledge of gymnastics is extremely limited, i played fast and loose big time with how events are structured, how scoring and medals work, and completely disregarded the actual athletes who won things those years. It all makes sense, don’t worry, but if you know more than the average person does about Women’s Olympic Gymnastics you are in for a frustrating time. Also, i don’t know what the FUCK gymnastics moves are called, so you’re getting them written in layman's terms. 
> 
> A few months before the Moscow olympics, the minimum age to be able to compete as a gymnast was raised from 14 to 15, so we’re just gonna ignore that all together because otherwise it doesn’t work.
> 
> Also warning for the like inherent aura of like child mistreatment that comes with competitive gymnastics, as well as discussions about weight and the pressures to be thin and attitudes surrounding food. Absolutely nothing graphic at all, really nothing to worry too much about, but the mood isn't pleasant if you are sensitive to things like that. 
> 
> I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but i feel like it’s important. I’m not going to go into detail, but for those who know what this means, there is absolutely no mention of the ranch although Károlyi is in this story, and the person involved in that was never born in this story and that’s that on that (please don’t ask me about this). 
> 
> There's info about the olympic structure at the end if you need it.

It’s 1980 and Katya is 13 years old. She’s never seen so many people in her life. The crowd in the stadium is deafening, the music is loud, lights are blinding. Masha the bear is everywhere, balloons, posters, the only familiar face in all of it. She marches with her team in the opening ceremony, waving intermittently to no one in particular, she doesn't get to hold anything, because no one knows who she is, but she doesn’t mind. She stays with all her teammates in a big room in the village. It feels like a slumber party, but her coach makes them all go to bed by 8. Parents aren’t allowed, and Katya is glad that they don’t have to witness the screaming and fighting that happens at competition. Coach Arkayev always tells her how happy she is that her parents aren't there to yell at each other, pats her on the shoulder like it’s an accomplishment. She smiles, happy to be praised, but at the end of a long day of training, when the mothers arrive to take their kids home, wrapped up in blankets and coats against the Russian cold, asleep in their arms, she isn’t so thankful.

She lives at the school, just outside of Moscow. She’s not allowed in the city, there’s no point, what for? So she feels like she may as well be living back in her old town with her parents and the animals. She trains all day long, each move over and over and over until it’s perfect and then more so she doesn’t forget it. People say that she’s good, they are very proud of her, so she’s happy anyway. Her friends and teammates help her up if she falls over, but will gladly trip her the next day.

The city is big, shiny and beautiful. Deep red everywhere to match her uniforms. There’s a lot of talking at the ceremony, and she zones out, uninterested and restless. Coach Arkayev will slap her on the back of her hands when she wriggles too much in her seat, yanks her up when the anthems play loud over the speakers, making her cringe away from the noise, as a deep chorus comes from the mouth of every athlete on her Soviet team. She knows the words, but she doesn't feel like singing along.

Coach Arkayev’s wife is there to make sure the girls are put together in their uniforms, to tie their hair back with ribbons, the same crimson as the spandex that suffocates Katya’s body. She mentions, voice light and melodic, how nice Katya’s hair is. How she’s jealous of how curly and frizzy it is. She sighs as she runs the hair iron through it to make it sit flat and out of Katya’s way. She puts the spray in it that makes Katya cough and splutter, airways coated in thick chemicals, so that it stays in its ponytail. She trims Katya’s bangs out of her eyes and straightens them too.

People keep talking about how it’s easier that so many countries aren’t there. Katya asks Coach Arkayev why they didn’t come, but he tells her not to worry about it, they weren’t a threat to them anyway. He laughs like the mere thought of such a thing is hysterical, and Katya laughs too. The week of competition passes by her in a blur.

She cries when she sees Nadia Comaneci, of the Romanian team. She doesn’t understand why, but her teammates squeal and shout until Coach Arkayev tells them to cut it out. No one notices the tear that drips down her face as she watches Nadia spin round and round, flip and flip. She feels like she’s seeing someone she loves. Coach Arkayev makes them all watch tapes of Nadia’s, and other girls’, performances back at the school, makes them copy her routine, until they do it better than her. The routine that earned her the first ever perfect 10 in women’s gymnastics is burned on the back of her eyes forever. She’s taller now, older, and her hair is cut short, mushroomed around her head. Katya loves it. Coach Arkayev tells Katya she has to be the best, there’s no other option, and he is serious when he says it, so she knows she has to do it. It feels just like any other competition, like the ones that got her here, back in Moscow, and St. Petersburg, but if she fails here, she’s never doing another one again. That thought alone propels her through the air on the vault, keeps her upright on the beam.

She wins the individual all-around gold and they all win the team all-around. Katya is surprised when she realises she’s won, but her scores are constantly high, even if she doesn’t get a 10. She stands on the podium to receive her gold, weighed down by her neck, flowers in hand, next to the East German that will beat her in the bars, and Nadia Comaneci. She has to keep pinching her leg so that she doesn’t scream. Nadia looks happy, but tired, a little down. She keeps glancing at Katya almost like she’s sad, and Katya wants to ask her what’s wrong, but she doesn’t speak Romanian.

The third day of competition creeps up on her, and it feels like one long, never ending day. Beam is her strongest event, because she is so flexible, but Nadia gets another 10, so Katya wins silver. Her teammate Nellie goes after Nadia on the uneven bars, happy because Nadia fell. But she does something the judges don’t like, and Coach Arkayev gets mad, but Nellie makes up for it with a gold on the floor. Nellie cries after the bars, and Coach Arkayev complains about how much time and effort he wasted in designing and practicing her dismount, a move that gets banned after her routine. He does it quietly though, facing away from the camera. The Romanian coach had made a fuss about one of Nadia’s scores, and Coach Arkayev was ecstatic, grinning for the rest of the day.

Katya goes last on the bars. Her routine is similar to Nellie’s but with a different dismount, so she wins a gold. She stands on the podium with two East German girls, and two Romanians, none of her own teammates. Most of her teammates aren’t Russian, so she doesn’t talk to them anyway. The ones who are also train at her school, and she’s happy to know a few people. Katya doesn’t understand why she is Russian and Soviet, and when she says she is Russian she gets told off, but can only talk to other Russian speakers. She doesn’t understand a lot of her life.

The girls she can talk to aren’t very interesting. Katya tries to ask them about what books they read, or what television programmes they have watched, but they don’t know. None of them brought books with them, but Katya has some from the small library at the school. She has a lot at the school, and will read them whenever she isn’t training or at the few hours of lessons she sometimes attends. Often when she asks them questions about things they like, they will check with Coach Arkayev first, before answering her.

Tall men in expensive suits come and congratulate the team back in the village. They tell her how important it was that they won the most golds, especially both all-arounds. They say that Moscow is proud of their daughter, and Katya doesn’t dare tell them this is only her third time in the city. But she’s proud of herself, she knows she’s done well, she’s not stupid. She wears her two golds and her silver under her tracksuit at all times. She doesn’t want to lose them, and she wouldn’t put it past her teammates to steal them. They are cold and heavy, but she doesn’t hunch her back at all, always stands tall and proud.

They stay for the closing ceremony, but it’s as boring as the first. Most of the teams have left already, no longer needed after they finish their events, exhausted after partying for their remaining days. But the Soviets must stay, no matter the sport. The athletes cannot be seen as wanting to leave the shiny capital of the Union. Katya stays inside her room for six long days before hand, bored out of her mind if not for the books she brought. President Brezhnev gives a long address at the ceremony, in between performances and shows. Katya wonders for a moment, as the ballerinas float effortlessly across the stage, if Sasha is there. She hasn’t seen her in so many years. Brezhnev commends Katya by name, along with all the other gold winning Soviets, and her chest swells with pride. She sleeps the entire ride home to the school.

 

* * *

 

It’s 1984 and Trixie is 15 years old. She has dreamt of Los Angeles ever since she was a little girl. Trixie doesn’t close her eyes for a second, staring out every window. Every tree, every building, it’s all the most amazing thing she’s ever seen. She hasn’t been to a beach since she left Wisconsin, has been land locked for the past three years in Houston, and if she tries hard enough she thinks she can smell salt in the air, and it’s driving her crazy. She thinks about asking her coach if they can take a trip to the beach one day, but Károlyi isn’t the most giving man, so she decides not to.

She shares a room with her two teammates in the village, like they do on all the competitions. Bela doesn’t say where he sleeps, but judging the way he twist and turns every morning, clutching his lower back, she would guess the car. He’s not technically an official coach, just their personal one, so he has to sit in the stands for most events. She walks around the village a lot. She spends enough time with her coach, and all her teammates, some of whom she meets properly for the first time, in the gym to keep everyone happy, but there’s no way she’s staying inside the whole week, watching television that they don’t normally have access to, or gossiping. She does her hair pretty, tall, like Dolly on the covers of the records she has in her room back home. She wears the nicest outfit she brought, a pink dress, big shoulders, no red white or blue to be seen, and wanders the hallways and manicured gardens of the Olympic village whenever she has the chance.

The Romanian team wins the all-around gold, even without Nadia. Trixie sees her by the judges, and it’s cool to see such a legend, but she doesn’t really care. It’s disheartening, especially when the men’s team won gold the previous day, but the silver still feels great around their necks.

With her in her room are Mary Lou and Julianne, the other two girls from her training centre in Houston, and she’s happy that she gets to experience everything with her closest friends. They are competitive in a good way, and Julianne has been here before so she shows them both how everything is done. Mary Lou wins the all-around gold, and Trixie can tell that America falls in love with her instantly. She’s jealous, Mary Lou gets all of the interviews, people elbowing each other out of the way to talk to the girl who has put America back on the gymnastics map. Trixie wishes it was her on the magazines, in the papers, on the news, but she should have done better, earned it like Mary Lou. All three of them qualify for each of the individual events, the only ones from their whole team, and their coach is beaming. He tells them over and over how proud he is of them, how well they did, but she knows he’s happy because it means he will be the official coach from now on, so she takes her praise with a grain of salt.

Floor is Trixie’s favourite, and best, apparatus. She enjoys how free it is, how you can do what you want in between runs and elements, you can dance around and have fun. She’d consider doing rhythmic gymnastics for the same reasons, if it wasn’t so stupid, and anybody actually cared about it. She wins the gold for the floor and cries. She stands, face aching from smiling, on the podium next to a Romanian with silver and Julianne with bronze. She quints through the flashing lights all around her to see Mary Lou’s sour face next to Károlyi and it’s as sweet as anything.

She had a crush on Mary Lou once. Back when she first moved to Houston and they first met. They’d stay together for all the competitions, in close proximity constantly, changed in front of each other no question. She loved her short hair, her muscles, the way she looked so dignified and proud after all her routines. But once Mary Lou started giving her unwanted, unwarranted opinions on whatever she felt was a problem, Trixie got over her real quick.

She basks in the reality that, at this point in time, she is the world champion in women’s floor. She is the one to beat next Olympics, and she can’t wait for the next ones. Trixie wins bronze on the balance beam as well, after two Romanians who tie for gold. Beam isn’t her favourite, but it’s the most difficult, so she’s satisfied. She had been practising her flexibility especially diligently in the lead up to the games, and it payed off. All three of them each win a gold and a bronze, but Mary Lou gets a silver too, and although she doesn’t rub it in their faces, Trixie can see how she holds her nose a little higher, talks to them both a little less.

Trixie cries again when they leave Los Angeles, and she doesn’t think she’s been so emotional in a long while. She feels like she’s being ripped from her home, again, rather than being taken back to it. They don’t stay for the closing ceremony, because they are too young to party, and Károlyi doesn’t want them participating in it all anyway, even though they are winners. Trixie asks to go to the beach, to see the sights, thinks maybe he will be lenient because she did so well, but he says no. It’s not like she brought money to do anything anyway. The flat, tree covered expanse of Houston comes into view from her aeroplane window, and she closes it. Her mom picks her up from the airport, and tells Trixie how proud she is of her, and Trixie’s heart swells. She heard it over and over all week, but it’s the first time she really feels it.

There are four new girls at the centre when they go back for practice, the Monday after getting back. They saw them all on TV, parents impressed at his teaching skills, eager to sign their kids up with the ex-Nadia, now-Mary Lou supercoach, just as Trixie’s mom had been when she was 12. Trixie feels like a star, revels in the way the new kids look up at her in amazement, an starts her stretching.

 

  


**Author's Note:**

> (specific to the 1984 & 1988 games)
> 
> all-around competition / day 1: each team member competes in every apparatus, and the scores are combined to create the team score. 
> 
> Individual all-around competition / day 2: the 36 highest scoring competitors (max 3 from each country) compete on every apparatus, and their scores are combined to create the individual score for each athlete. 
> 
> Individual competitions / day 3: the eight highest scoring athletes in each individual apparatus (vault, beam, bar, floor) from day 1 (max 2 from each country) compete in whichever they have qualified for.


End file.
